


better run fast as you can

by plutosrose



Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: "run!", Alexander Pierce dies slowest, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Hunt, Canon amputation, Canon-Typical Torture, Captured, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Some Sam/Steve undertones, Trains, Whumptober 2020, mentioned in a body horror kind of way, mentions of torture and murder, no. 9 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:27:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26865889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: Watching Bucky fall was one of the worst experiences of his life.A minute later, the train stuttered to a halt, and he fell too.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948822
Comments: 11
Kudos: 39
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	better run fast as you can

**Author's Note:**

> title from Dangerous Man by Little Dume.
> 
> This is for the Whumptober 2020 prompt "Run!"

It was a trap.

In hindsight, he should have realized it. The intelligence that the SSR managed to recover on HYDRA was rarely so clear cut. But beyond that, it was his responsibility to know what his men were walking into before they walked into it. He was the one who led the team, who drew enemy fire away from his men, who would make sure that they survived the war and went home to their families.

Anything less and he wasn’t properly looking out for them.

Anything less and he’d failed as a leader.

Watching Bucky plummet down into the ravine below was even worse. It felt like someone had ripped out a part of himself and left him achingly empty.

He curled in on himself as he tried to keep his hold on the train car.

Just then, the train stuttered to a halt, jerking violently on the tracks. As the wind picked up, he tried to scramble back inside the train, finish what they started.

But as the train yawned back to life, the hold that he had on the door slipped right out of his hands.

Later, he’d wish that he’d had some kind of profound thought about himself and his place in the world as he fell. The history books would probably write in one for him. But all he thought as he plummeted to the earth was, “Shit.”

-

He woke up for about three seconds in the snow, bruised and bloody. Trying to move sent pinpricks of sharp pain throughout his entire body.

He thought of his mother, long blonde hair plaited down her back and flour on her hands. He tried to think of his father, but instead just saw Dr. Erksine, warm eyes and bright smile. 

And it was at that moment that he realized that he wasn’t going to die.

What came next, however, was a bit different.

-

In the dark, he felt hands pulling on him, dragging him. He felt the frigid slide of packed snow against his back. A corner of his mind was very amused that he’d turned down some additional modifications that Howard had wanted to make to the suit before he’d left. Seemed like just his luck.

-

“Wake up, Captain.”

-

Gasping, he woke up. His muscles were incredibly stiff, and having his arms pulled above him didn't make anything better.

“Zola.”

HYDRA’s top scientist, and the Red Skull’s right hand man was standing in front of him, hands clasped together, staring at him as though he was a butterfly caught under a piece of glass.

“Nice to see you too, Captain,” Zola pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

“I suppose asking you nicely to please let me go wouldn’t work,” Steve growled out, rattling the chains above him. Zola chuckled.

“You know they really undersold your sense of humor, Captain,” Zola smiled up at him. The smile was unnerving, distantly reminding him of the way that Billy Tenker had burned up ants for fun on the stoop of the apartment building growing up. 

Steve spat on him. 

Zola simply took off his glasses and wiped them off with a handkerchief that he retrieved from his pocket. “As I was saying Captain, we are very eager to learn more about Dr. Erksine’s work. I am certain that you can be very helpful in that regard, no?” 

“I’m not helping you or HYDRA with anything,” Steve hissed out. The fact that Zola had the utter gall to even mention Erksine’s name made him bristle with anger. 

Zola simply tutted to himself and shook his head. “You misunderstand me, Captain, I am not asking you, I am _telling_ you.” 

-

As it turned out, there were some things that spending his life on death’s door, not to mention the serum and the Vita-Ray machine, had prepared him for. 

He might have been much stronger than the average soldier, but even he couldn’t immediately walk off a fall from the train’s height. 

The men who unshackled him spoke a mix of German and Russian. Every so often, he could pick out the stray phrase or two. _Zola said to bring him._ The other word that they kept repeating over and over again was _table_ and as they dragged him through dark hallways (Steve tried to keep as conscious as his body would allow, so that he could get a clear mental map of the place). 

It didn’t take long for him to find out exactly what they meant by ‘table.’

It was not unlike the table that he’d found Bucky strapped to at Azzano, all restraints and strange medical instruments. 

The men who had been guiding him there pushed him down onto the table, buckling restraints. He pulled against them, but they otherwise appeared to hold his weight--he must have lost more of his strength in the fall than he had realized. 

Zola loomed above him, tapping an empty syringe thoughtfully. The first three broke almost instantly when he tried to force them against his skin. Despite the fact that he’d been going in and out of consciousness for the past few hours (or possibly even days, who the hell really even knew), he smirked.

“Gonna have to try harder than that, Doctor.” 

Zola smirked back at him as he selected another syringe and found a vein. “I have nothing but time, Captain.” 

-

He was a little dazed and fuzzy when they put him back in his cell, chaining him back to the ceiling. Flashes of light and color and electric pain exploded behind his eyes. German and Russian phrases echoed in his brain as he gritted his teeth. _Can you make him forget?_ _It’s not working._ _We’ll try again._

How long had he been down there? 

At the very least, he was slightly more lucid, and it was possible for him to fully take in his surroundings. 

And realize that he wasn’t alone.

There was a man in the cell next to him, huddled in a corner. Frankly, it was hard to tell if the man was alive or dead. The thought made his stomach twist itself into knots.

And then, he heard it. 

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

His eyes went wide as he realized that the body in the corner of the cell was very much alive. “Bucky?” 

Bucky still had an arm curled protectively around himself. “Steve?”

The relief that flooded into him threatened to overwhelm him. “I thought--I saw you die.” 

“I’m...not dead?”

Steve broke into a stupid grin despite himself. “No, I’m afraid not, Buck. Afraid you’re stuck with me a while longer.” 

When Bucky shifted, Steve could see him a little better. He tried to school his expression into one of neutrality, something steady and comforting.

But fuck, was it hard.

“Bucky,” he murmured. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky whispered back. “I don’t know what happened. But they just….they just took my arm.”

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and tried to suppress the urge to get sick. He stared as far above himself as the position would allow. 

If the bars were made of the same metal designed to hold him, then he was going to need something slightly more clever than just wrenching the bars open. 

“They’re going to take me down at some point, I don’t know when, I’m not too sure of what day it is down here. But when they do, we’re going to run.”

“Steve,” Bucky started, before he began to shiver violently. 

“I’m going to get us out of here, I promise.”

-

Steve liked to think that he had always been a man of his word. The next time the guards came for him, he let himself go slack in their grasps, before he violently shoved one of them into the cell door, and then picked the other straight up off the floor and pressed him into Bucky’s cell door. 

“Open it, or I snap your neck.”

The man let out a stream of German that, if Steve had his translations correct, indicated that he was very worried about this turn of events. 

He fumbled with the keys as Steve held him against the door, before slotting it into the lock. Once he had, Steve threw him back and the man collapsed alongside the other guard. 

“Steve,” Bucky murmured against his neck as he hauled him to his feet. 

He reached out and cradled Bucky’s face in his hands for a moment. “Can you walk?” While his strength was coming back, he wasn’t exactly confident in his ability to carry Bucky any great distance. 

Bucky nodded absently, and Steve did his best to not look directly where his arm should have been. What the flying hell did HYDRA want with his arm? It dominated his thoughts, crowding out any possible questions that he had in the moment about why Bucky had survived the fall.

“I’m with you,” Bucky nodded again, gaze hardening into something that felt a little bit more like the man he’d known on the train. 

Steve nodded and reached out to pull him forward. “Follow me, I think I have a pretty good sense of how to get out.”

-

It went well, almost too well. 

Although Steve had been in and out of consciousness when he’d been brought into the base, his brain had been working overtime ever since, taking note of every corridor that HYDRA showed him. In some ways, he thought with a hint of amusement, he was a man with a plan.

He had taken a right, then a left, then another left, and as they’d gone straight ahead, he could start to hear the sound of the wind against the mountain. “Almost there, Buck, almost there,” he murmured. 

It was then that he heard the agents thundering down the corridor, a mix of German and Russian shouted commands. 

“It’s fine Steve, go, you have to go,” Bucky placed his arm on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You have to go right now, okay?” 

“No, I can’t.” After Azzano, he couldn’t believe that Bucky would even suggest such a thing. 

“You have to. I’ll be fine.”

Bucky was, most definitely, not fine. It occurred to him that he’d heard Bucky screaming, sharp and in painful agony, and suddenly, he had no idea how long they’d been in the base. He’d thought it was a day, but, maybe it was days. Or even weeks. 

With more light, he could make out scars on Bucky’s arms and face that he knew had never been there before. 

“You have to go,” Bucky repeated, squeezing his shoulder almost painfully tight. “For fuck’s sake Stevie, I am _not_ letting you die down here.” 

If there was one thing that war had taught him, it was that evil villains didn’t tend to give evil speeches (unless they were literally megalomaniacs like Johann Schmidt).

No, these agents marched forward, undeterred. While Steve broke into a run, he noticed suddenly that Bucky wasn’t beside him. 

Instead, he watched in horror as Bucky was wrenched back by several HYDRA agents back into the mountain. 

“RUN!” 

He wanted to shout back that there was no way in fucking _hell_ that he was going anywhere without him. Bucky hadn’t left him when Azzano exploded, and he wasn’t going to turn around and leave him now. 

He felt rooted to the spot, bound by a desire not to leave him behind--because Bucky would never do the same to him--and feeling the knowledge that this was going to be his only chance to escape creeped up his spine. 

The word ‘no’ died in his throat. Bucky just repeated that command over and over again, wild with fear. “RUN! RUN! RUN!”

In that moment, it dawned on him that Bucky had never meant to escape.

That he knew, in the end, only one of them was going to make it out.

Steve’s breath caught in his throat as he scrambled away as quickly as he could, forcing himself to turn away when he heard the hiss of electricity and Bucky went down.

-

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been running, but eventually, there was nothing before him other than more snow and hills. HYDRA could have been anywhere, but the fact that he was alone must have meant that they’d lost him. 

Time had compressed and expanded down in that mountain hold, and he frankly wasn’t sure how long it had been. A rescue team was out of the question regardless. That was kind of the whole point of him leading the damn team in the first place. 

He collapsed down in the snow for a moment, wrapping his arms around himself. It had to be at least twenty more miles to camp. He could make that in a couple of hours, he thought, if he walked with enough purpose. 

He shuddered violently as he tried to will himself to get back up. Bucky’s screams were still ringing in his ears. “Keep moving,” he murmured to himself, teeth chattering. “You have to keep moving. Come on. Get up. Get the fuck up, Rogers, you’ve been through worse.” 

Like pneumonia in ‘37, which had rattled his lungs so badly that he could have sworn that he heard Bucky actually asking him if he’d want a priest to come to their apartment. It had been so bad that he’d seen his mother, walking around their place and tending to her chores like she’d forgotten that she’d died. 

He’d never seen Bucky so scared before.

Well.

He shook off the thought and hauled himself to his feet. His limbs were icy and cold and he could feel it burning his lungs, but he didn’t care. He was going to drag himself the rest of the way if he had to.

-

“Give him some space!”

He heard Peggy’s voice first, and saw the wild whip of brown hair as she parted the group of soldiers who had gathered around him. Peggy was always impeccably put together--neat uniform, flawlessly bright red lipstick, and not a single hair out of place. But not today. She didn’t look like she’d slept.

She reached out and put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. Somewhere in the last twenty miles, his legs had given out on him, and his mind had stopped making sense of the distance that he’d traveled. 

“He’s...they...he’s alive,” Steve gasped, reaching out to hold onto Peggy. “I got out but he didn’t, we...we have to go back for him.”

Peggy furrowed her brow. “What happened?”

“The train was a trap, it was a trap,” Steve babbled helplessly. “The doors...didn’t hold...fell.” 

Peggy waved away the group of soldiers, before turning her attention back to him. “It’s okay, you’re safe now.” 

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and tried to steady his breath. “HYDRA. They got both of us. They have a base somewhere in the mountains. Bucky fell too, but he survived. Whatever they did to him in Azzano, it must have worked. We tried...we tried to get out, but he didn’t make it. He’s still there.”

Steve clenched his jaw tightly. “We have to go back for him. I can...try to figure out where the base was. It’s somewhere in the Alps, but here can’t be that many possible locations. Then we can find him.”

Peggy’s lips curled inward. “I’ll do what I can to find a team.” 

Those words made Steve’s blood start to boil. For a moment, it was easy to forget that this was the same woman who had helped him charter a helicopter to fly behind enemy lines in direct opposition to the wishes of his commanding officer.

Instead, he thought of Colonel Phillips, who had resigned himself to writing condolence letters for soldiers that weren’t even dead yet.

“You don’t think I’ve heard that bullshit before?” Steve snapped suddenly, glaring at Peggy. “Colonel Phillips was going to leave him and hundreds of other men to die because rescuing them was too inconvenient. I can’t believe that you would stand here and just leave him out there to die. We need to be doing something _right now _, not whenever you just so happen to _get a team together._ ”__

__Peggy reached out and held his hands in hers. Although there was a gentleness in her gaze, there was a hard edge as well. “We’re going to find him,” she started, before adding, “I know that you’ve been through hell, Steve. I can’t even imagine it. But just because I am not your commanding officer does not give you the right to act like I am your inferior.”_ _

__Steve nodded, his gut twisting the same way it would when Bucky would tell him off. “I’m sorry.”_ _

__Peggy smiled sadly and nodded. “I’m going to do what I can, Steve. Please trust me. We’re going to find him.”_ _

__-_ _

__By the time he went down in the Valkyrie, they still hadn’t found him._ _

__-_ _

___2012_ _ _

__Romanoff was the one who found him standing in front of the apartment where he’d lived with Bucky. Or it would have been the apartment--instead, it looked like it was a Salvadoran restaurant and a dry cleaners now._ _

__“I realize we don’t know each other very well,” she said evenly as she stood next to him. “But if we’re going to work together, you can’t do this run away act.”_ _

__Steve clenched his jaw and looked down. “I’m not running away from anything. I made a promise.”_ _

___”I need to ask you about someone I knew,” Steve had said to the SHIELD handler that was showing him where he’d be staying for the foreseeable future. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th - he was captured by HYDRA in 1944.”_ _ _

___The handler’s face tensed. “Fury said you’d ask,” was all he’d said, until Steve had repeated himself so many times that the man had been forced to say, “Missing in action, presumed dead.”_ _ _

__She gave him a disapproving look and tutted to herself. “Promises aren’t usually something that we make in this line of work.”_ _

__Steve glared back at her. “I’m not in any line of work.”_ _

__Romanoff let out a sound that sounded like a parody of a laugh. “It’s a wild goose chase, Steve.”_ _

__“Yeah? Not to me,” Steve huffed out. “I need to know what happened to him.”_ _

__Romanoff turned and looked directly in his eyes in a way that made her seem taller. “You might not want to pull on that thread.”_ _

__-_ _

__“I’m going to find out what happened,” Steve said to Natasha a week later. It was at about that time that the sky opened up and aliens were doing their best to take over New York._ _

__“A lot of people are going to die without your help, Steve,” Natasha gave him a level, hard-edged gaze, the same that Peggy had all those years ago._ _

__-_ _

__She said it again when she found him trying to pack up the few belongings that SHIELD had provided him._ _

__She leaned against the door, folding her arms across her chest. “You can’t tear the world apart for one person, Steve.”_ _

__“Yeah? Watch me,” Steve grunted as he pulled the bag closed._ _

__“Then I’m coming with you.”_ _

__-_ _

__It turned out that having Natasha along for the ride wasn’t so bad, even if he did have to keep reminding her to keep her feet off of the dash of whatever car he happened to be driving. She kept Fury off his back, and it didn’t seem like there was anywhere on the entire planet where she couldn’t fit in._ _

__For the most part, it’s clandestine meetings in back alleys and warehouses. His French is pretty good, his German passable, and his Russian fleeting, but he’s pretty sure that Natasha’s contacts, for the most part, are speaking Hungarian. Or Bulgarian. Or maybe he didn’t know Russian as well as he thought he did._ _

__He usually just stood there while Natasha spoke rapidly to her contact, or he didn’t go to the meeting at all._ _

__“Some people might find you a little intimidating,” was the way that she’d phrased that, though Steve thought she was plenty more intimidating than he ever could have been._ _

__That was what had happened that night. They were holed up in a safe house in Paris. Natasha had told him to relax while she met with her contact, but he couldn’t. Instead, he spent several hours pacing up and down the tiny flat, the last thing that Bucky had said to him echoing in his ears._ _

__When Natasha came back (through the window, because she couldn’t just once use the door), she dropped a file on the kitchen table. Her lips curled as she glanced at him. “You’re not going to like it.”_ _

__“Awful descriptive,” Steve rolled his eyes, because there wasn’t much that he liked in this strange new world so far._ _

__-_ _

__Not liking it didn’t even begin to cover it._ _

__The more that he looked at the files--all in a dizzying array of different languages--and the fucking pictures--he felt like he was going to be sick._ _

__“I left him there,” Steve clenched his jaw._ _

__Natasha frowned as she sat opposite from him. “From the way I heard the story, it doesn’t sound like you had much of a choice.”_ _

__“I still shouldn’t have done it. Like the rest of my men, he was my responsibility.”_ _

__“Not a lot of people would sacrifice themselves like that,” Natasha continued, folding her hands in front of her. “He must have really believed in you.”_ _

__Steve took a deep breath and closed the file. “Him believing in me doesn’t make what happened to him any better.”_ _

__“No,” Natasha mused. “It doesn’t.”_ _

__-_ _

___Six months later_ _ _

__Dead end after motherfucking dead end. It would have been a relief if they could find just one HYDRA agent still alive, someone that he could pin the responsibility for what had happened to Bucky since 1944 on._ _

__But it was just ghost story after ghost story, and he would have thought the entire thing was made up if he and Natasha hadn’t been clearing actual HYDRA bases across Europe._ _

__It was after the tenth base--if you could call it that, it was really just a couple of offices, almost comical in how normal it was, Alexander Pierce requested a sit-down meeting with him._ _

__Pierce reminded him a lot of Senator Brandt in some ways, all disarming smiles and too much familiarity. “Can I get you something to drink, Captain?”_ _

__Steve shook his head as he sat down across from him. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t be staying long._ _

__“You know, it’s an honor, my father served in the 101st,” he turned and smiled that charming smile again. Steve tried not to look as annoyed as he felt._ _

__“Fury has given you a lot of latitude in this...mission of yours,” Pierce continued, swirling the bourbon in his glass. “I think that both you and Romanoff’s time can be better used elsewhere, wouldn’t you agree?”_ _

__“No sir, I would not agree.”_ _

__Pierce’s smile grew tighter. He placed his glass down on the table. “Here’s the thing, Captain--if we had any real, concrete leads on what had happened to James Buchanan Barnes after 1944, we would have found him by now. I am deeply sorry to have to be so blunt with you, but I can’t stand the thought of you traveling the world spending all of your time trying to...solve a frankly unsolvable mystery. You understand, right?”_ _

__“Perfectly,” Steve said tersely as he stood up. “We done?”_ _

__Pierce nodded. “I promise you, if we have any information, we’ll let you know. I’d really like us to be friends, I think we can accomplish a lot together.”_ _

__Steve grinned, suddenly remembering the way that Bucky told him he’d always grin stupidly before goading someone into a fight. “Sure Secretary, sounds good to me.”_ _

__-_ _

___2013_ _ _

__There is a man in his apartment._ _

__Steve took a defensive posture immediately. He went to flick on the lights when he heard a voice whisper. “No, don’t.”  
The voice was like a kick to the chest. “Bucky?”_ _

__“I don’t know who Bucky is,” the man murmured. Steve’s entire body was positively vibrating with the desire to get closer to him. “But I know you’re Steve. You’re Steve. They’ve had me watching you for days. I think you used to be small, but there’s no way that if I saw you I wouldn’t recognize you. At least, not now.”_ _

__Steve furrowed his brow. “Who are you talking about?”_ _

__“The...the bad people. The bad people in the mountain.”_ _

__His mouth went dry. “HYDRA?”_ _

__The man shrugged. “I don’t know. The bad people.”_ _

__Steve’s heart was thudding rapidly in his chest. “Where are the bad people now?”_ _

__“Nowhere important….I have to go.”_ _

__Steve stepped forward, but as soon as he had, Bucky had disappeared again._ _

__-_ _

__Associated Press - @APress - 25 min ago_ _

__@PresidentEllis is expected to make a statement this morning on the death of World Security Council Secretary Alexander Pierce._ _

__“It’s not just Pierce,” Natasha said to him over the phone. “It’s two entire STRIKE teams. Tony’s looking through the files now. All HYDRA. I’m sending you some photos of the crime scenes now. Don’t ask how I got them. Barnes is pretty creative.”_ _

__Picture after picture of STRIKE agents gutted and bloody filled his phone screen. “Fuck,” Steve murmured as he scrolled through them. He had worked with some of these men, but from the photos, he couldn’t recognize any of them from the ways that their bodies had been torn open._ _

__“He saved the worst for Pierce. Police report says his body showed evidence of torture before he died. Pictures are pretty...interesting. Have to say I respect your boy’s methods.”_ _

__His mind skidded to a halt for a moment, before focusing on the pictures of Pierce, which were definitely worse. Steve had seen plenty of horrifying images in his life, but this ranked up there. “Pierce was HYDRA?”_ _

__“Apparently so.”_ _

__“Do you have any...other information?”_ _

__There was silence on the other end of the line. “After I release the files, I’m going into hiding. But I’ll keep you posted.”_ _

__-_ _

___Three months later_ _ _

__“I’m working down at the VA,” Sam said, shrugging. “You know, if you ever wanted to come down, make me look awesome in front of the girl at the front desk…”_ _

__Steve chuckled. “I mean, I don’t have a lot going on these days, so maybe I could consider it?”_ _

__“You still doing that Captain America “Man With a Plan” thing?” the curve of Sam’s smile was quite nice, Steve thought._ _

__“I’m figuring things out,” Steve shrugged. After the full extent of HYDRA’s infiltration of SHIELD had been revealed to the general public, there’d been hearing after hearing, and then even more hearings when more files had been released showing HYDRA at every level of government._ _

__Then, he caught sight of someone in the distance._ _

__For a moment, he thought he was being subtle, but Sam was quick to follow Steve’s line of sight, a look of concern on his face. “Do you know him?”_ _

__“Yeah,” Steve breathed. “Can you just--I’m sorry I have--”_ _

__He jogged over to where Bucky was standing, metal hand pressed against a tree. His other hand was clutching his middle. “Steve,” he murmured, shortly before he slumped over in his arms._ _

__“Buck, what’s wrong?”_ _

__Bucky shook his head. “Just got stabbed. I’ll be fine.”_ _

__“He doesn’t look fine,” Sam had caught up with them and was looking at Bucky with increasing scrutiny and concern. “You might want to take him to a hospital.”_ _

__“No, no hospitals,” Bucky leaned so hard into Steve’s side that it took a lot of effort for him to not just tip over._ _

__“No hospitals,” Steve echoed, before looking over at Sam. “Whatever’s left of HYDRA might be watching my apartment.”_ _

__Sam gave him a disapproving look, before he let out a sigh. “Fine, but only because he needs to go somewhere. But you owe me, big time.”_ _

__-_ _

__“Roommates are both out of town this week,” Sam said as he got towels and blankets out of the closet in his room. “You can use my bathroom to shower.”_ _

__He shoved them into Steve’s chest. “You owe me big time,” he repeated._ _

__“Of course,” Steve nodded sheepishly._ _

__Bucky collapsed on the bed and let out a shaky breath._ _

__“I can’t stay, Steve,” Bucky murmured softly. “I’ve done...I’ve done a lot of bad things.”_ _

__“Those bad things weren’t you.” He and Natasha had uncovered plenty of evidence of the things that Bucky had done. It didn’t matter. And he sure as hell didn’t care about any revenge that he’d exacted on HYDRA._ _

__Bucky shook his head. “I don’t think it matters. I still did those things.”_ _

__“Do you remember what I said in the mountain?”_ _

__“Honestly?”_ _

__“Yeah.”_ _

__“No, not really.” Bucky turned bright red at the admission. “I remember some of it. I remember us trying to escape. I remember you. But a lot of it is...jumbled up. All of my memories are.”_ _

__Steve frowned as he sat down next to him. It was the first time that he’d been able to see the gleaming metal arm properly. The wound on his stomach was already healing._ _

__“You had scars.”_ _

__Bucky gave him a quizzical look. “On your arms...and on your forehead. It was kind of hard to get out of my head. I should have gone back for you.”_ _

__“You would have died,” Bucky said sternly. “My memory isn’t always great, but I know that. You would have died.”_ _

__“Doesn’t matter,” Steve shook his head, “if it was me, you would have gone back for me.”_ _

__“You wouldn’t have wanted me to die either, I know that.”_ _

__Steve cautiously reached out and held Bucky’s hand in his. Bucky, for his part, didn’t push him away. After all these years, he had never quite gotten around to imagining a moment where they might be able to sit beside each other again._ _

__“I loved you, Buck.” It felt like a relief to put those words out into the world, even if part of him felt like they’d always been there._ _

__“Loved?”_ _

__“Love,” Steve amended. “I don’t want to pressure you for things that you can’t or don’t want to give me.”_ _

__Bucky turned to face him, his hand coming up to caress his face, before he leaned in and pressed his lips against his own._ _

__Steve had kissed a decent handful of people, but kissing Bucky was nothing short of overwhelming._ _

__“Please don’t leave again,” Steve murmured against his lips. And in that moment, he got that familiar Bucky Barnes grin that he hadn’t realized until that second just how desperately he’d been missing it._ _

__“You still talking, Stevie?”_ _

__“You’re not giving me a reason to stop,” Steve grinned back at him._ _

__Bucky Barnes might have never brawled in a back alley for a purpose other than making sure that his face didn’t get punched in for the third time that week, but that didn’t mean that he shied away from a challenge._ _

__Before Steve could say another word, he slid down, yanking Steve’s pants and boxers along with him. He already knew that the way that Bucky licked his lips was going to be burned into his brain for a while._ _

__“Shit,” he murmured. He didn’t dare let himself close his eyes. Instead, he looked down, focused on the way that Bucky had taken him into his mouth, on that warm, wet slide and the long strokes. “I’m not going to--you can’t expect me to--”_ _

__His hands tangled in Bucky’s dark hair--longer than it used to be, he noted--as the twist of pleasure in his abdomen brought him higher and higher--and he cried out, a lot louder than he meant to, and came in his mouth._ _

__“Bucky,” he murmured, pulling him close and reaching between them to undo his fly and wrap his hand around him. “Don’t leave. Please don’t leave.”_ _

__Those little gasps that he managed to pull from Bucky were everything, as was the way that Bucky’s metal hand carded through his hair._ _

__The silence after Bucky came sent a shiver through his spine._ _

__“I have to leave. I can’t stay here, Steve. There are people looking for me.”_ _

__“I can help you. Just...let me help you,” Steve took his hands in his own. “I’ll do whatever you want.”_ _

__Bucky gave him a quizzical look. “It’s some things that I have to figure out on my own.” Steve had several guesses about what that meant--burning out the rest of HYDRA, for starters._ _

__“Teddy Roosevelt Island, a month from today, after dark,” Bucky said suddenly. “I’ll be there. If you want to see me.”_ _

__Steve squeezed his hand and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be there Buck.”_ _

__-_ _

__Three days later, a gift basket showed up on Sam’s doorstep. He blinked as he stared down at the arrangement of fruits and jams and assorted muffins, before he picked up the card._ _

__“Thanks for letting us lay low for a little while. Sorry I hooked up in your bed. Enjoy the gift basket, call me if you want to go running. I promise to slow down for you. - Steve,” Sam read, before glancing at the number written on the back._ _

__“Well, he definitely owes me more than a gift basket for that,” he shook his head as he took the basket off the steps and went back inside._ _


End file.
